


Cerulean

by AdderTwist, SandyQuinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 10:33:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdderTwist/pseuds/AdderTwist, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandyQuinn/pseuds/SandyQuinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So like AGES ago Adder and I wrote this thing back and forth in emails that was basically an angst-fest between Hermann and Newton and tonight I found it and decided to rectify some things </p><p>so we finished writing it into a happy ending. </p><p>Well. Some tea gets thrown around. But still. </p><p>It’s by both of us - I wrote Newton’s lines and Adder wrote Hermann’s, basically, you can tell he wrote Hermann because his parts are so much longer and more eloquent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cerulean

It takes Newton at least two weeks to realize that the dreams of feral hunger and distant underwater lights are not the product of feverish, overworked imagination as they usually are, but real, lingering memories from the Drift and he wakes up at two in the morning and walks around in his lab, just stalks from one corner another restlessly to give his body something to do as he laughs hysterically.

It takes him three more weeks to realize that when he looks at Dr. Gottlieb and catalogs away the tenseness of his mouth as usual and thinks “he must be out of tea”, it’s not just an absent thought.

He knows.

Newton isn’t used to feeling connected to other people. Other people are puzzles, usually boring ones that he leaves unsolved but Hermann Gottlieb opens to him like a map he can suddenly read.

He’s never felt this unhappy before until he realizes that it’s not him, and he lets Hermann’s presence wash over him like his own painful thoughts do. It doesn’t matter, not compared to what life is really about, except to Hermann it does, so Newton does something he’s never done before and leaves him a cup of tea on the counter.

He watches as Hermann picks it up, sniffs it, and then takes a sip and promptly chokes.

“ _I_  think it tastes better with all that sugar,” he shouts and ducks when the cup sails over his head.

Newton’s whirring, overactive mind likes problems like kaiju which are endless and  _amazing_ and somehow being able to understand Hermann makes him at least as attractive, perhaps because for the first time Newton finds him actually interesting, past the cursory respect and as competition. Besides, a small part of him considers them both now part of the Hive.

Because Newton does everything the wrong way, he starts to fall in love.

One day he looks Hermann in the eyes, in the middle of a crowd of yet another celebration and he realizes with utmost, cold clarity that isn’t familiar to him but is very familiar to certain someone, that Hermann hates him.

It doesn’t wash over him.

It’s not Hermann’s presence in his mind and it’s not the mindless feral need of the Hive to be together, it’s all Newton, who, for the first time, feels the world slow down around him to a screeching halt, feels his own brain freeze into something unmovable and distant.

He wonders if Hermann feels it too.

He turns and goes back to his room, sits in the midst of his kaiju paraphernalia and feels nothing at all. 

 

* * *

 

 

Hermann has never really known how to love anyone or anything, not in the whole aching, clumsy extent of his life, except for the terrible, fatalistic adoration for the seemingly-impossible scale of kaiju.

They’re monsters, piles of towering garbage from nightmares wrapped in dinosaur and shark skin and impossible plates of mythical dragon armor. 

Even though he loves them, he detests them too, detests them for being an illogical, impossible fact, blotting out the sun with the enormity of their surely unsustainable bulk, and he hates them and hates them and starts to write about how their cells must work, what cushioning and counterweighting and ligament alignment must be necessary to let these beasts move around. The awe and horror and love makes him sick and miserable, and the sick part takes up his life.

 

He spends years like this. No person is as important, of course, with the end of the world looming, but what does he care really? They’re illiterate to physics and their bodies obey and it leaves him furious and tired and, after a time, defeated. But he works, and works, and he keeps working.

 

Sharing an office with Newt Geiszler is a nightmare. The epitome of humanity, self-absorbed and gibbering and vain, and he loves them too but he loves them with the gormless, bright enthusiasm of a man who grew up playing with little toy kaiju. He doesn’t understand and Hermann lets a deep-seated rage fester in the pit of his stomach for months, until it’s all getting to be worse and he realises what his calculations mean and he’s too tired, too tired to hate with any heat anymore, and just starts to hate Newt with that same terrible, bitter defeat he felt when he couldn’t understand the godlike, beautiful grisliness of a creature with a tail that could knock down an apartment block. Newt sees himself just that huge, rockstar, painted in bright colours, and Hermann thinks he’s a perfect example of humans and why they can consume and destroy so fast.

 

And then he Drifts with a kaiju and the world is awful and awake and Hermann wonders, distantly, if the reason he’s only now snapping into urgency is something he should see a doctor about, and then they BOTH do and nothing much in the world matters anymore except that in a bright, awful moment of clarity he knows, KNOWS beyond a shadow of a doubt, that with all his curdled, bitter resentment, his exhaustion and his pain, he is not like them, he is not meant to feel this way, and he is nothing. Nothing to the kaiju and nothing to the wildly spinning steel-and-glass trap of Newton’s brain and he hates them more than ever, labels it as what it is, envy, and is drawn into the pulsating blue whir of the Hive.

 

When he recovers from the black dots and whirl of teeth and chittering hunger, when he’s done being sick and somehow, somehow the world is saved, he takes to watching Newt. He can feel Newt’s ghostly mind slithering against his, hints of muscle memories that tell him to pick up a guitar instead of a violin, feels his stomach quirk with interest at the smell of coffee just before his own memories protest. He feels himself getting eaten up and he watches Newt and wants something and doesn’t understand, and cold, bitter loathing suffuses him, but he has clarity, now.

 

It’s not Newton he hates, anymore than he hates his mirror. No. The dour line of his mouth goes thin and brittle.

 

Maybe, he thinks, as the celebrations continue, as he cradles a glass of champagne, he should go on some kind of medication, instead of wasting his life staring at people who’ve somehow earned themselves the right to be happier at their lowest than he ever hits. He pours it out, and goes and sits, stiff-limbed, limping and blank, by the immense metal carcasses of the Jaegers, stares up at them and wonders why he never noticed before now that other people smile, and he hates Newt for making him hate himself and spends hours there, trying to right his mind, not used to the frenetic high-speed whirl Newton has infected it with. Brilliant, manic, wild-eyed Newton. Well, he’d be happy to have the lab to himself, at least.

 

 This, he thinks, with his curdled little grimace of a smile, should have been obvious.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He’s used to fast recoveries, shrugging off failed relationships and hateful relatives and broken body parts in favour of his obsession. 

 

The heavy dullness will not leave. 

 

 Newton moves in his usual pace, erratic and feverish, trying to catch the tail-end of something that seems to be eluding him (sadness, he’s never experienced heartbreak before) but he can’t, no matter how hard he throws himself into his work, and Hermann’s tired bitterness ghosting in the edges of his mind so clear and cold isn’t helping. He turns to the only direction available and focuses on the kaiju, on the Hive. 

 

He finds himself able to laugh again but he bares his teeth now, letting the wordless, painless force of the creatures in his dreams take over for him when he seems unable to find himself. Somewhere in the distance is Hermann and Newton lets him in too, walks back into his bedroom after hours and hours spent uselessly in the lab and rips down all his posters in a fit of numb, mindless snarling rage. Somewhere in the back of his mind what is still him, curled up and confused, starts weeping, but he’s not himself at the moment, something brewing inside him and he doesn’t know what _do._ Somehow, Newton has never been afraid to act before and now he’s crippled by it, choked down by its weight as they tiptoe around each other, tensing as uninvited thoughts, sharp sensations of blood and flesh pass between them, and he feels caged in this insanity. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Hermann can feel Newton’s mania chewing at him constantly, and he hasn’t slept in several days. Even if he closes his eyes, the despairing, starving chorus of the Hive judders soundlessly through the ridges on the inside of his skull, dragging and echoing and building unbearably, so he stays awake and stays away from his lab as the parties die down.

 

 Weeks pass. Hermann loses track.

 

He tells himself that there’s work to be done, but he’s lying; he, like the kaiju, has no place in this shiny, hopeful new world. Still, he works though there’s no point, calculating the densities of different tissue samples to try to work out what the optimal muscle density for a kaiju is, if it can be replicated for techno-organic inventions, and works without sleep because he can’t see any reason it should matter anymore, his calling called and his only colleague having detested their brief entanglement of minds so thoroughly, shying so much from the touch of his mind, that they no longer pass one another in corridors.

 

 The combination of stimulants originally designed for the rangers keeps his body from lagging too far behind, but after three days without food, with his head throbbing like he’s going to have another seizure, going to be sick and somehow from his throat will emerge the Throat itself, a wash of the terrible blue and shrieking vengeful gods - weak and self-disgusted, he moves towards Newt, feels the throbbing ease like he’s lowering the tension on a hook in his frontal lobe, and ends up standing, lost as a small child, an inch deep in congealed kaiju gore on Newt’s side of the lab and offering him sweetened. Fucking. Tea. Because apparently he’s just swallowed most of a cup of coffee, and his leg is entirely consumed by pain but he doesn’t know how long since he’s abandoned his cane, and he’s holding the tea and he’s angry, he’s furious, his eyes are wet and for the first time in almost a month, though the clatter and croon of the Hive is loving and more clear than ever, his head doesn’t hurt.

 

It lasts for a moment while he stares dumbly, feeling humiliation wash sickly from his toes all the way up, curdling in his stomach and turning his dour face blotchy pink, and then he chokes out an apology, wipes his nose on his sleeve (a small stain of blood) and turns to leave.

 

 His two options are to open himself up like a gutted animal and find a way to pull hated, clever, beautiful,  _lucky_  Newton into himself, or, much more likely, get to the other end of the damned world. If this tie doesn’t sever, if he doesn’t stop feeling like the stunted hanger-on to Newt’s whirring mind, he’s going to do something stupid, and he might leap into the abyss right alongside Newt for the sake of the world, but for bitter, untouchable love? He isn’t twelve.

 

* * *

 

 

It can’t last, because Newton feels already driven into madness, his mind jumping from one extreme to another even in its calmest seasons and right now he’s a storm. Their world shifts in blurs of motion, to more work, to writing things down, to packing, to sending emails, to horrible awkward moments and bitter lonely nights where Newton doesn’t know what to do with himself and then Hermann brings him tea and it  _ends_.

  
It ends with a cup of tea, raising in the air in an almost messianic slow-motion, in Newton’s mind’s eye, as he watches the sugary brown liquid escape and splash them, and his work bench, and a gratuitous amount of Kaiju guts, with tea, and he thinks, “I should have not thrown that cup” but of course all of these kinds of thoughts are afterthoughts, for Newton, in the vein of “I should not have tickled that bouncer” or “I should not have taken a tattoo there”. 

 

  _"Shut up!"_   Newton finds himself screaming instead, and it feels good, the Hive in the back of his mind egging him on, filling his head with red mist that he thinks is rage but he doesn’t feel angry, exactly, just incredibly  _frustrated_. Shut up, stop talking, stop apologizing, stop filling my head with thoughts and emotions that I’ve never been equipped to deal with, shut  _up,_ you bitter, old, horrible man, I love you. 

 

He’s not sure if he’s shouting out loud or in his head, but either way, Hermann is staring at him and he knows that he got it, every word, and suddenly, as raw as it feels, like an open, fresh wound, he feels better, full of energy instead of itching, painful despair, adrenaline pumping through his veins, standing there, panting while hot tea slowly soaks up into his shirt. 

 

* * *

 

 

Hermann’s head is ringing, by now; the difference between noise out there in the real world and the clicking, seething wreck of the Hive bouncing violently through his entire cerebral structure is enough to nearly make him faint, and there’s hot tea on his chest and he can never remember being this fiercely glad or this  _angry_ and he doesn’t really remember moving but there’s only a moment’s wild-eyed, still pause before he lets out a wordless, wild noise, years of frustration and bitter, hateful adoration boiling to the surface with all the sudden intensity of a geyser.

 

He’s not really sure what his intention is. It doesn’t matter.

 He hauls Newton bodily onto the desk, and he can hear himself shouting, ears ringing, but he’s got fistfuls of Newton’s shirt and his nose is bleeding again and he’s halfway on top of Newton when he kisses him-

 

\- except kissing is so much too generous a word, what he really does is make some kind of despairing, half-sobbing snarl and bite wetly at Newton’s mouth, and he’s expecting to be shoved away, but there’s a desperately breathless, “What the  _hell_ , man-” and then Newton is dragging at his jacket, trying to pull it off and kiss him at the same time and-

 

 -Hermann is struggling to breathe and there is the Hive but the Hive is just them now, locked and wheeling madly out of control with a cacophonous hiss that must be in the minds of both of them and-

 

-pressed together, not sensual, more a mad, wild fight and they fall on the floor and-

Hermann breaks away first, head reeling from the dizzying whirl of linked thoughts that contact offered. He lies panting, on the floor of their laboratory, and Newton, lying sprawled beside him with blue seeping into his white shirt, starts to laugh hoarsely.

 

 "For such a polymath genius, Newton," he finds himself breathing, as he rolls onto his side to look at the still-laughing, trembling shape of the idiot he’s inextricably tied to, "you really are a blind fool with  _terrible_ taste.”

Newton, loving a fight as always (as he must love Hermann, the only way anyone could love someone like Hermann is like this, vicious and spiteful), he sits up sharply.

 "Hey, you asshole, that’s totally missing the point-"

  
Hermann has never known how to love like other people do. He’s all horns and thorns and bitter, the acrid taste of too much adrenaline and too many sleepless nights is the essence of his nature, but for the first time in years he laughs light and soft. Of course Newton, who drinks black coffee and then tries to drown it in sugar, of course he’d look at something like Hermann and feel love, of course he feels the way he does about kaiju and grating loud music and ridiculously sour crippled Hermann and think he sees something sweet and worthy.

 

 Hermann drags him down and kisses him, biting and hungry, and Newt laughs against his mouth.

 

 

* * *

 

 

One minute his heart is broken and the next his world is colours and sensations and warmth of an approving Hive in the back of his mind and this is all how it should be, in Newton’s world, he doesn’t feel alive otherwise. 

  
(They’ll be awkward, later on, and they’ll be bitter and angry, and uncertain and tender and thousands of other things, and Newton who throws his soul into what he does, everything he does, can’t wait to throw it into this one.)


End file.
